


Paint you mornings of gold

by ctimene



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Labyrinth Fusion, Dragons, Fairy Tale Elements, Goblins, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-02 09:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19438660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctimene/pseuds/ctimene
Summary: A word of warning, reader.This story starts at Nonsense, and goes downhill from there. On to darker things, and Goblin Kings, and dancing and despair. So take a little breather, and enter if you dare.(Yes, this is a Labyrinth AU. Don't worry, the rest of it doesn't rhyme.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the lovely pogopop after I called out for aid in the night

_A word of warning, reader.  
This story starts at Nonsense, and goes downhill from there. On to darker things, and Goblin Kings, and dancing and despair. So take a little breather, and enter if you dare. _

* * *

From the top of the hill at Fort Nonsense, Foggy could see New York City. It was hard not to think of it as home. 

He understood, of course. He was a smart kid — everyone said that, over and over again, affectionate and proud, ‘Foggy’s got brains, he gets it’ — so he knew it made sense to shut the store in New York when takings dwindled, when their only customers wanted rope and duct tape and no questions. He could see how much his dad loved explaining the right gauge of wrench to shoppers who really cared, how people in Morristown, New Jersey, really appreciated craftsmanship, how his mom finally got to use her carpentry skills and how much happier it made her.

And it was better for Candace, of course. Parks to get fresh air in her lungs, packs of mothers-and-babies roaming the wide streets and trading tips, and, in a couple of years, good schools with libraries and colonial tradition seeped into the brickwork, to give her the best possible start. Because “if she’s anything like her big brother”, she was a smart cookie, and that needed nurturing.

So what if Foggy grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, in the one-and-a-bit-bed apartment above the store and turned out just fine? That was no argument. And he was seventeen. He really didn’t get a say, even if they said he _did_. Of course he smiled and agreed and celebrated the move. That was how it worked. He was _just a kid_.

Still. He climbed the hill and watched the city. There were clouds coming in fast from the ocean, wind whipping through the trees all around. A fox, bold as brass, crossed the grass in front of Foggy, head turned accusingly at the only person mad enough to be up the hill with wet weather on the way. But still, he stared at New York. It was 30 miles and a state border away, but to him it might as well have been the Goblin Kingdom, glittering and golden and entirely out of reach.

Golden. Crap. Golden meant sunset and seven o’clock. He was late and he had promised! He had promised so faithfully. Running was not his forte — see more debate and dramatically sighing on hills near national monuments for that — but he hoofed it all the way back home in record time, a storm following on his heels. 

Anna Nelson met him on the porch with a towel and a smile on her face and cut him off before he could even begin apologising. “Your father’s still not ready, Foggy, don’t worry. Dry off before you catch a cold.”

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I’m really-”

“I know,” she said, and the look she gave him was almost sad. Candace started crying as he toweled off his hair and she sighed. “Could you check on her for me? I’ve got to hurry your dad, we’ve got reservations.” Reservations Foggy had almost made them late for; he cringed as he climbed the stairs. Stairs. The house had _stairs_ , and more than three rooms, and he still wasn’t used to sleeping in it, with its noises and darknesses and the quiet stretching out beyond. 

“Don’t fuss over her all night though, she should be down by eight. Maybe you could work on your college applications?” his mom called. A knot of dread twisted in his guts. He knew that on his desk there were forms for Harvard, Yale, and underneath the rest, Columbia. He _wanted_ , so badly, but every time he picked up a pen his fingers froze. He wasn’t Ivy League material, he wasn’t a Harvard man. He wasn’t a man, full stop.

His dad was in the upstairs bathroom, adjusting his tie in the mirror. “Up at the fort again?” he asked, with a quick glance to take in Foggy’s nod. “I keep telling you, it’s a load of old non-” 

Foggy managed to groan through the punchline in a sufficiently teenage manner to wring a grin out of his dad. “Mom’s waiting,” he added, just this side of teasing. At least his lateness was genetic.

In his parents’ room Candace was bawling her eyes out, poor thing, but she managed to hiccup his name through her tears and grab at him. Well, his hair — she had a thing for his hair, which promptly went in her mouth for chewing. “Bleurgh, you disgusting pixie,” he chided, but he bounced her on his hip as she gurgled all the same.

“Foggy! We’re off!” Downstairs the front door slammed and Candace started to howl again, in tune with the wind. Time to break out the big guns.

“Shhh, shh, I’m telling a story. Once upon a time, Candy, there was a brave girl, a very brave and _quiet_ girl, and she had a city, called New York, the greatest city in the world and she protected it, secretly, because she was very brave, and _very quiet_.”

Candace must have been listening, must have recognised the change in tone that meant _storytime_ , because she quieted, shoved her thumb in her mouth and clung to Foggy’s shirt with her other hand. 

“But the Goblin King was jealous of her city, and how happy it was, and how full of children, because goblins cannot have children, Candace, they can only steal them. And so he stole something of hers, someone she loved: maybe a man, or a woman, or maybe her silly big brother. And he took that person through the Labyrinth, to the castle beyond the Goblin City.”

The Goblin King was her favourite story, Mom and Dad said. Foggy wasn’t sure if they were humouring him, but he adored his little sister, and the tale had grown over repeat tellings. Now, though, she was warm and full and sleepy in his arms, so he skipped the middle and got straight to the ending.

“But she travelled through the maze, through the dungeons, past foes and fiends and found the Goblin King and said: ‘Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great.’ ” 

He took a breath for the final line, to boom and bluster the way his sister liked, when a clatter and crash sounded downstairs. A window left open in the storm, he thought, and hoped it was only a lamp blown over, not one of his mom’s sculptures. 

He popped Candy back in her cot and she obediently snuggled down in her blankets. “Fogg,” she murmured. “Fogg. Fogg.”

He pressed a kiss to her downy head. “I wish we could have adventures with goblins, Candy.” He was too old for wishes, too old for goblins, but at that moment there was nothing more he wanted than to be out of the house. Instead, he closed the door behind him and went to fix whatever had fallen over. 

He could hear Candace burbling: “Fogg! Fogg! Fogg!”

And then he couldn’t. 

Three steps down the hall he turned back, and the bedroom door was ajar. 

In the space between a flash of lightning so close he could smell the burning ozone and the clap of thunder that followed it, he was in the room. The light switch didn’t work, the temperature dropped by half, every hair on the back of his neck, his arms, stood up and Candace was _gone_.

But Foggy wasn’t alone in the room. Something scuttled under the bed, something else chuckled in the en suite, there was a whole host of _presences_ and shadows and whispers, and Foggy’s strong disbelief in the supernatural was dissipating faster with every lightning strike.

Something like a scream was trying to fight its way up his throat, but the thunder kept cutting him off. A fox barked outside, in the garden — no, at the balcony, pawed at the window ( _two storeys up_ ), each sound from it like a cry, like a warning. And then it was bigger, monstrously large, filling the window, cracking open the balcony doors with a snarl on its maw-

It was a man. Not a man, really, but man-shaped. The fox’s ears settled on his head as horns, soft but wickedly pointed. He wore dark red leather, thick and deep as blood, across not quite enough of his chest for decency. The jacket billowed out behind his legs like a cape. A band of cloth covered his eyes and he twirled a thick stick in one hand, just heavy enough to be a weapon. The grin was all fox. Foggy had never been more afraid.

“Give her back.”

“What’s said is said. And done.” The goblin — it must have been a goblin, though it was fairer of face than any goblin had a right to be — had a voice that rumbled down Foggy’s spine more thoroughly than thunder. (The thunder had stopped. There wasn’t a sound but that voice. Not a whisper. Eyes on his back, though, eyes on every side, but he couldn’t pull his own away from the goblin’s grin.)

“I didn’t say anything!”

“On the contrary, you say a lot of things. I’ve heard you. You wished the goblins would take her away, and we have.”

“You’re the Goblin King?” Foggy knew it was wrong before he said it.

“More an heir.” He looked smug, but it was information, and Foggy was painfully low on that.

“A prince?” The grin sharpened. Foggy never told Candy about a prince. She was too young for princes. “A son? Goblins can’t have children.”

“No. We wait for you to wish them away.”

“Uh, false premise!” It was probably not the time for debate club instincts to kick in. And yet:

“What?” He’d succeeded in shocking him. The Goblin Prince tilted his head. His horns twitched.

“I didn’t wish her away! I wished for an adventure. For both of us.”

“An adventure you shall have, Foggy. And so will she.” He swept his arm wide, voice filling the room and Foggy’s blood. He had to steel himself, grit his teeth. 

“ _I meant together_.”

“Then you should have been more specific.” Foggy wanted to punch him. He was pretty sure he’d break his fist on that jaw, but Candace was _gone_ and there was a powerful dread weighing down his heart. He hadn’t wished her away, he knew it. _It wasn’t fair_. “Of course,” the prince continued, “you could forget about he-”

“Okay, pal, I appreciate the devil/temptation get up but _give me back my sister._ ” 

The grin fell off the prince’s face, but there was no Candy, no cry of ‘Fogg’, and for a moment, just a moment, Foggy’s anger choked his fear enough to send him barging past the prince, shoulders colliding, out through the window into the cold _(hot)_ night _(day)_.

Desert. Broken trees. He was at the top of a hill, and in front of him stretched out-

“The Labyrinth. Complete it, beat it, make it through the Goblin City to the castle and you will get your sister back, Foggy. Within the time, of course. Thirteen hours.” The Goblin Prince was leaning against a grandfather clock, his finger on the hour hand.

Far in the distance, the Goblin Castle gleamed. It couldn’t be more than thirty miles. Walking, he could do four miles an hour, easy. But that was in a straight line.

“I want more time.”

“You want your sister back. Can’t have everything.”

“I want more time and you’ll give it to me, because- because Candy isn’t getting an adventure, and that’s what I wished for.”

“She’s with every goblin I can command. What greater adventure is there?”

“That’s not an adventure, it’s a kidnapping! Thirteen more hours, for a promise broken.”

The prince stalked closer, his horns twisted. His face was mean beneath the mask. “I promised you _nothing_ ,” he hissed, in Foggy’s face, before he turned, and disappeared under his cape, into a gap in the air that was never there. 

There were another seven hours on the clock. It was more than he could have hoped for. 

* * *

He didn’t expect getting into the Labyrinth to be such a problem. He ran along the outer wall, looking for a door, an arch, anything. He even tried to climb in, but the curling vines snapped beneath his weight like dry straw. It felt like he’d gone miles and miles (and at some point, shouldn’t the wall curve or bend?) when he finally saw another soul.

It was a goblin, he supposed. A tall goblin, and pale, with eyes the size of saucers. Her hair ran almost to her ankles, past a silk shirt, cut-off breeches and a belt so full of tools and pouches it looked like it should have pulled her slight, stretched form to the ground. She was catching butterflies in a net almost as big as her, and she was a foot taller than Foggy.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused,” she muttered, before swooping on another flutter of wings. 

“Do you know the way into the Labyrinth?”

“Yes.” Now he was closer, he could see that the butterflies weren’t that at all. They were fairies. The goblin upended her net, tipped a dozen of the dazed creatures out onto the dirt — and began ripping off their wings.

“Stop it! What are you doing?!”

“My job. You don’t ask the right questions, do you?” The goblin smiled, self-satisfied. 

“You don’t give the right answers!”

“I always give _an_ answer.”

“Fine then!” He paused for thought. He had to remind himself to think; the whole place had him topsy-turvy, mouth before brain. But fairies and pixies and goblins and all the denizens of his childhood were still fresh in his memory, so he asked: “What’s your name?”

Names have power. Names tell you secrets and summon help. The Goblin Prince had known his name, he remembered, with a shiver. It had sounded mocking on his lips. 

The goblin girl was quiet for a moment. Foggy slid his foot forward in front of one of the downed fairies and felt it climb up his leg and into his coat pocket as the goblin kept her eyes over his shoulder. Then: “Paige.”

It was much more human than he expected. But, of course, goblins were made, not born. His heart dropped a few inches in his chest. This was what could happen to Candy. “When did the king make you a goblin?”

Paige’s eyes snapped back to his. “I’m not a goblin! I’m a pixie! Take a fairy, take its wings off-” she did so again, with a sound like tearing wet paper “-plant it, grow it, pixie!” The fairy in his pocket shuddered, but the others didn’t put up a fight as Paige dumped them, one by one, into small holes in the ground in front of the rose bushes climbing the walls of the Labyrinth. 

“But what if they don’t want to be pixies?”

“You don’t get a choice on growing. You grow, or you die. All pixies were fairies, most fairies are pixies. It’s not about what you want. Bad question again, ask another.”

He’d got off track. “Can you- no. Will you show me the way into the Labyrinth?” 

The change in her face was like turning on a lamp. She beamed at him. “Of course. This way.” Paige took three steps to the left, clicked her fingers, and a doorway appeared, as if it was always there. “Don’t die too close, you’d be a horrible mess to clean up,” she added brightly.

Foggy wheeled on her. “Do you work for the Goblin King?”

“Not at all,” she said, flouncing out. “You ask very bad questions,” he heard, as the door swung back behind her and became solid wall again. 

He took two steps away from the door and almost fell through a turning that, seconds before, had looked just like the rest of the wall, stretching on forever. 

“Right then,” he said. “Come on, feet.” And then: “Wow, no, that was a weird thing to say.”

He took two steps and then thought better of it and checked his other pockets. He found all manner of useful things — he was a carpenter’s son. A small wrench, some nuts and bolts, and, most importantly, a thick ball of blue plastic twine. A branch crept over the labyrinth wall, next to the hidden door, and he tied one end of the string around it. That was how a hero had defeated a maze in a story he half remembered, with string and a sword. The closest he had to a sword was an adjustable wrench, but it’d have to do. 

There had also been a monster with horns in that story. He shivered, but unwound the twine and started walking again. The only monster he’d met was a goblin, and the worst of that was behind him.

* * *

It felt like he walked for hours, taking turn after turn after turn, always aiming for the city, the tallest towers of which were just visible over the walls but never seemed to get any closer. It was quiet, unerringly so — he could see pawprints or footprints in the dirt sometimes, but not a soul came near him.

Another dead end. He turned back, followed the twine round a familiar corner, then a bend that was less so. The paving under his feet turned rough and uneven, and he definitely couldn’t remember coming this way before. The Labyrinth was playing tricks on him, he was sure of it, but at least the string would take him back to the beginning, back to safety.

A turn and — the prince was waiting for him, trussed up in the string, a bow around his neck. Behind him the line went no further. Foggy’s mind flashed bright and hot with rage.

“Well, look at us, all tangled up in the red string,” the goblin grinned. 

“It’s blue,” Foggy spat. Maybe goblins were colourblind, maybe the prince was teasing him, all he knew was that he had been clever, been _smart_ , and all his good work had been undone by the creature that had stolen Candace to begin with. It wasn’t fair.

“Oh,” said the prince, nonplussed. His mouth drew into a tight line and the twine blossomed red — literally bloomed, tiny pinprick flowers opening along its length. Foggy dropped it like it was red hot, and the prince sighed and shrugged the string off. The flowers seethed and skittered at his feet.

“How are you finding the Labyrinth?”

“Pretty easily, since it’s all around me,” Foggy snarked.

The goblin smiled and stepped closer. Foggy made it his mission not to shrink back against the wall, but a lot of the Labyrinth was wall. “That was good, almost worthy of us,” he said. Foggy had never felt pride and shame at once, and so acutely.

“I’ll have this done in no time,” he added, voice twice as confident as he felt, and the smile fell off the goblin’s face. 

“Why do you always open your _mouth_?” he snarled, but then another voice carved across him. 

“No time? What a good idea!” It was cruel and cold and ancient, made Foggy shiver and the prince screw his mouth downwards. 

The grandfather clock from the hill shimmered into view, its hands whirring, faster and faster. It struck again and again — seven times, all his extra hours gone in an instant, and then once more, as if to underline the unfairness of it all. Foggy watched, mouth gaping, heart breaking, until the static electricity faded from the air along with the wicked laughter of the Goblin King, and he was left alone with the prince. 

He had just nine left now.

Eventually, he found his voice and his anger, past the grief in his throat and the tears in his eyes. “That’s not fair!”

“Why should it be?” But the prince sounded subdued, less like he wanted to win the argument, although of course he would — his was the Labyrinth, his were the rules, and nothing was _fair_.

“Everything should be just.”

“This is just.”

“No, it isn’t.” Circles. Walking in circles, talking in circles, the whole damn idiocy of it was infecting Foggy’s brain, driving him to distraction, to curled fists and bitten-off words and fury filling his blood.

“It is. It is _just_ how it is.”

Homonyms were going to be the death of Foggy. He let out an inarticulate yell and kicked the wall, and when that served only to hurt his toes, stomped his foot.

“Don’t!” The prince looked almost panicked.

Petulantly, his hands still balled into fists, Foggy did it again.

The flagstone gave way beneath him, and he screamed as he fell.


	2. Chapter 2

A hand grabbed his. Several hands, in fact, grabbed him in several places, some less grabbable than others. They protruded from the walls of the seemingly bottomless pit like moss from the sides of a well. They should, by all knowable criteria, have been terrifying, but their skin was gently furred and a calming blue, and as they held him, suspended but totally secure, Foggy felt safe for the first time since entering the Labyrinth.

A hand that wasn’t holding him waved. “Hello,” he said, as pleasantly as he could manage. It waved again, then pulled two of its neighbours to help it speak.

“Hello! We’re helping hands!”

“That’s very good of you,” he replied, easily enough.

Another voice cut across what seemed like a pleasant conversation. “Give me your hand!” All of the hands turned up and Foggy dropped another foot or so before they had the presence of mind — presence of _hand? —_ to catch him again. Above him the Goblin Prince was reaching down with one leather-clad arm, his upper half hanging down into the hole. It was an impressive, if entirely unwarranted, display of athleticism.

“Uh, no?” Foggy guessed.

The prince cursed. “I’ll set you back on the path, come on, take my hand and I’ll bring you back up.”

“I’ve got plenty of hands down here,” Foggy said, and his audience gave him a smattering of applause.

“Oh, very good. We can help you up, if you like. But it’s best to go down.”

The prince was still there, blocking out the light above. “Don’t trust the Hand,” he said, but Foggy ignored him. Who was he supposed to trust, the goblin who’d stolen his sister?

“Yes,” Foggy said. “I’d rather go down.”

“NO!” yelled the prince, and the hands echoed him with surprised, disappointed, amused and downright mean ‘ohs’ of their own. Wrong, wrong, wrong, they sang, discordant with the wind that whistled past Foggy’s ears as he plummeted down.

“Not the right choice,” one fretted. “Right would have been wrong too,” it mused. “On the one hand… and on the other… Maybe down is looking up.”

But Foggy had already fallen far out of reach by the time the fingers clicked.

He hit the ground pretty softly in the end, slowed by the not so helpful hands. Down. Wrong. He'd bear that in mind. The room he was in — the windowless, doorless, underground room that was definitely not a pit where he would starve to death — was warm and bright for a not-pit. Oddly featureless, smooth stone on every side, and nothing to help him except-

“You!” It was the pixie from the door, Paige. She ignored him and went on strategically rearranging the dust with her net. “Paige!”

That got her attention. “Oh, you're here. Not very good at this, are you?”

“Where are we?”

She rolled her large eyes. “This is a man hole. It's where you put men when they're being… manly, I suppose. And annoying. Until they stop.”

“So men just get stuck in here?”

“I s’pose. I'm not a man, never thought to hang around and watch. I'll be going now, in fact.”

“I want to go too. Take me with you, please.”

She gazed at him steadily. “Can you go?”

“I'm not a man,” he said, unsteadily. _Yet_. Something strong and cold, like shame, pulled at his throat as he spoke, even though it was _good,_ he could escape, he could find Candace. It was… complicated.

Paige had no time for nuances. “You look like a man. But it's the Labyrinth, not everything’s what it seems.” She said it idly, but then her jaw snapped shut with a click, as if she'd revealed too much. A pause, and then: “Do you have a sword?” she asked.

Foggy stared at her. “Uh, no.” Christ, how old was she? Had she been guiding people through the Labyrinth since pirate days?

She frowned at him, so he offered her his adjustable wrench instead. She squealed with delight.

“Oh, you aren’t a man! Asked for a weapon, offer a tool. No, not a man at all — you’re a treasure!” A coy wicked shadow of a smirk passed across her face. “Careful you’re not stolen.”

She took the wrench from him and scraped three lines, the rough outline of a doorway, into the dry clay wall, and pushed. The door opened into darkness, total and featureless. Paige took a small lantern from her belt and shook it, and a feeble light glowed within.

“Needs more fuel,” she muttered. “The fairy you stole, is he dust yet?”

A chill stole over Foggy’s bones. “What?” he asked, but he was already checking the pocket where the creature had hidden. The fairy was gone, but the weight and warmth were still there, in a small heap of dust. He drew out a pinch and it glowed like embers between his fingers.

_What had he done?_

“What happened, where did he go?” But he didn’t need that question answered, and Paige seemed to know it, tapping her foot expectantly. “Why didn’t you warn me? I wouldn’t have let him if I’d known.” He was going to be sick — except his stomach was empty, and heavy, and his throat felt swollen shut with grief.

Paige held out her lantern for the dust, but he was reluctant to let go. “I told you, rules of the Kingdom, you grow or you die. It's a choice.” She must have seen the horror on his face, how he swayed on his feet, put a hand to his stomach — he'd _killed_ it, and he'd thought he'd been helping, he was the monster, a _murderer_ , he wanted to vomit, punish himself — because she put her other hand on his arm, tentatively, as though comfort wasn't natural to her. “It wasn't _your_ choice. Some don't want to grow.”

He still couldn’t answer, tears springing at the corners of his eyes, so Paige pinched his wrist in just the right way so that his fingers spasmed, and the dust trickled into her lantern. The glow within sparked red and then gold and swelled, enough to cast her hair bright and shining, and she stepped into the darkness beyond the door.

“Come on,” she grumbled. “Cry later. You want your sister? It’s time to go.”

Except, it sounded like _grow_.

He stepped through the door.

* * *

The darkness was all-encompassing. Paige’s lantern lit the floor beneath their feet and, for the first few steps, the walls and ceiling above them in the rough-hewn tunnel, but soon the space widened and the roof stretched out of reach.

Sound was not. Not muffled, not echoing, just not. He could hear his footsteps, and his voice, when he hummed a nervous tune, but everything else was silence. No scraping of mice — or worse — no skitters or scratching, and when Paige was more than three steps ahead he lost her too, only the faint glow of her lantern and her pale hair to guide him.

“What is this place?”

“It doesn’t have a name. Nothing here has a name. That’s the point,” Paige said, and there was a quaver to her voice, something other than scorn or boredom in it now, something like fear.

“Nothing here? So there’s… something here? Some… things?”

“Shhh. If there was, wouldn’t want it to hear you.” She gripped the lantern a little tighter, hoisted it higher. The feeble light still didn’t reach the ceiling, and Foggy still had questions.

“How high does it go?”

“What?”

“The…” What was the word for a space like this? Foggy didn’t think there was one. “Cavern? How high is the roof?”

Paige laughed, and that tinkling sound was also lost the instant it ended, snatched out of Foggy’s ears by the darkness. “There’s no roof. There’s no walls. Nothing until it stops being nothing. That’s a black sky, up there.” She hesitated, and then went on, quieter. “That’s what we call it, though it’s got no name. Black sky.”

“When do we get through it?”

“When we do.”

“And how?”

“We walk.” He reached forward and gave Paige’s shoulder a squeeze, and the grateful look she shot back at him seemed to surprise her even more than it did Foggy. It looked good on her face though, softened her large, hard eyes and hinted at what a real smile might look like.

On and on they went, through the darkness, and it never ebbed, never changed, and never lost its grip, tight around Foggy’s throat, wisping at his wrists, until he held his hands tight to his chest, worried they might vanish into the blackness if he let them drop to his sides, out of sight.

It felt, as so many things had in the Labyrinth, impossible. But it was a different sort of impossibility — not full of wonder, or interest or even fear, but a creeping dread. This was where the Labyrinth went _wrong_ , not a wrong turn or a wrong door, but entirely, unmistakably wrong; where adventures ended, abruptly, with no proper rhyme or reason.

This, he realised, this was dangers untold, a sinking sensation and a chill on his back and the knowledge he’d never be able to explain this, the utter terror of it and yet the certainty of putting one foot in front of the other, of getting through it step by step.

Just for a moment, just to see with his fingers since his eyes were useless, he stopped, turned and stretched as far as he could, arms above and out and around. Nothing but empty air all around, nothing to assure him his eyes were open except for the surety of his own mind. He shut them, briefly, and opened again to Paige’s lamp winking out of view.

He broke into a run to catch it and found nothing, no corner that had hidden it, no path to follow. And maybe it was his panic, his imagination, but it sounded like his footsteps had echoes now, when they couldn’t be echoes — could only be other feet, following him, hunting him. “Paige?” he asked, and no echo called back, no other voice, just the silence and the beating of his heart and two, three, four sets of footsteps running out of sync with his.Foggy couldn’t tell how long he’d lost her for — a few seconds? Minutes? He shouted for her again, and again that lack of echo sent shivers across his skin, the sensation he was trapped in a box, the walls only a few inches out of reach but moving with him.

His heart was pounding in his chest when a hand grabbed his and he spun round to find Paige behind him, face pale and lantern fading. “I said _walk_. Running’s not walking.” But there was no force to her scolding, just that same high note of fear, stronger now. He nodded and turned to take a step. As soon as he moved forwards, something cool and sharp slid against his neck. In front of him, Paige squeaked and dropped her lantern.

It shattered into a thousand pieces, but the light didn’t go out. If anything it grew stronger, and then started moving — the dust swirling through the air, up past Paige’s waist, curling around her throat, illuminating the second blade being held against her neck. It floated over to Foggy too, twirling into separate tendrils and hanging in the air, finally showing him the neat checkered pattern in the cobbles, the wrench gleaming in Paige’s belt, and the person threatening to slit their throats.

Foggy swallowed. “Hello there. Sorry for, uh, whatever we did, but could you let us go, please?”

It was a girl — it _looked_ like a girl — but as the dust danced and swirled, he could see that she wasn’t holding the long, forked blades at all. They _were_ her, where her hands should be, wrists tapering into metal at the ends of her bare arms. At her ankles, too, she didn’t have feet but points, like short, deadly stilts, or a ballerina en pointe — a deadly, stiletto daggerpoint. She turned her face to him, though her sai stayed sharp and still against his Adam’s apple, and her face was the most elfin of any he’d encountered, in either the real world or this much realer one, pointed and stunning.

“Let you go? You should have asked me to let you come here in the first place. This is the Black Sky. I am Black Sky.” Her voice sounded like hot tar, flowing and noxious.

“Right. Um. Hello. Sorry about that, we didn’t know you were here.” Paige made a slight squeak and the blade pressed closer against her throat. “Well, I didn’t know, and I’m sort of at the centre of things here. Maybe. I don’t know, I’m sure you have a rich and complex life of your own, and I don’t want to disturb that, so if you could point me towards the Goblin Castle, I’ll be going and-”

“You talk too much,” said Black Sky. “Why do you want to go to the castle?”

“To get my sister. She was taken.” There was a rustling in the dark, and Foggy knew it had to be close, something moving around him, close enough to brush his hair, but he didn’t flinch. It felt _friendlier_ that the goblins in his parents’ bedroom had, so many hours ago.

Black Sky withdrew her blades from their necks with a thoughtful sound. “If I give you passage to the edge of the sky, will you do something for me?”

He swallowed. “I’d try.”

“Kill the King.”

“No!” He said it without thinking, but it was true nonetheless. He couldn’t even consider it.

Black Sky snarled and kicked a stiletto foot through what remained of Paige’s lantern, sending dust flying to all corners of the cavern, illuminating thousands of faces peering at him from the gloom. Children’s faces, on monstrous bodies, matted and twisted and painful looking, half weapons, half wounds.

“He deserves it. He’s taken hundreds of lives. Our lives.”

“That’s- that’s terrible, but I can’t _kill_ someone. That’s not how it works. That’s not how _I_ work.” He hesitated. “I don’t know how justice works here. Nothing’s fair and everything is back to front. But I’ll try to help you get it, if you let me go. Let us go, I mean, me and my friend.”

“Your friend?” The not-quite-a-girl said, not quite a question.

Foggy nodded. “She’s only here because I asked her to show me the way. That’s what I mean by fair, you see?”

Black Sky looked at him for a long while. Then she gave a single, sharp nod. “I will take you where you need to go. Then justice.”

“For all of you,” Foggy promised, and the faces all around him started in shock at being addressed and blinked back into the darkness.

“Oh, mine will be enough,” Black Sky promised. Foggy swallowed and she gestured beyond his nose with one of her blades. “Go that way, I’ll be behind you in a moment.”

Foggy was quick to obey, leaving behind the light and those hundreds of invisible eyes, dragging Paige behind him. In the pitch black there was nothing to do but put one foot firmly in front of the other with confidence he didn’t know he had.

It was only minutes before Black Sky caught them up with a whisper of metal on stone, but he didn’t know how far they’d gone without her. Still, it was a little lighter — when she was a step or two ahead, he could make out the shape of her, the glimmer of her blades. Despite her spiked feet, she picked her way across the rough floor as surefooted as a goat, even when it started to shake under their feet. Foggy almost grabbed her to steady himself and narrowly avoided slicing his hand open on her sai.

She grinned at him, the white of her teeth shining in the gloom, and it suited her. “My lieutenant, the new Sky. She has a tendency to shake things up a bit.”

“She can control this place?”

The grin dropped off her face. “No. It’s not so simple here. The place controls us back. The King controls everything — except you.”

She looked at him with an intent he couldn’t interpret. Paige had stopped looking at him at all.

“What did he do to you?”

“He took me, and then he took my hands.”

“Took you?”

“There’s not a goblin that wasn’t taken. You’ve met the Goblin Prince. He was like your sister once, and like all of us. The King doesn’t favour all of his thefts so greatly.” Black Sky slid her blades together with a painful screech.

Foggy shuddered. “I have to save Candace,” he murmured, more to himself than anything else, but Black Sky tilted her head, and something like softness came over her face for the first time.

“I know. I think you can.”

The softness, he realised, wasn’t just her expression, but the light it was cast in. Something rosy and gentle, a not quite dawn, was rolling overhead like clouds. He took a step into sudden warmth, the sun on his skin, the red dust of the Labyrinth beneath his feet. Paige scuttled past him, but when he glanced back, Black Sky was hesitating, lingering on the edge of her space, where the gloom receded into blackness as far as the eye could see. Her face was hard again.

“I think you can too,” Foggy told her, and she joined them in the light.


	3. Chapter 3

It only took turning a single corner for the darkness to wink out of view. Foggy studied the sky, but there was no suggestion of shadow, not even a cloud to obscure the warm, orange light that beat down equally from every inch of the heavens.

They were further into the Labyrinth now, closer to the Goblin City. The paths were less foreboding, warm, covered in green vines and full of bright birds, barely the size of Foggy’s little finger, flitting from branch to branch. He watched them as they walked, blurs of colour as the foliage around them darkened, and it was only when one landed on a twig that crumbled to ash beneath it that he realised the vines weren’t green-black, but burnt, charred, preserved by the total stillness in the air. Somehow he had walked from a lush jungle to a charpit in five steps. The Labyrinth kept doing that, kept changing, faster than he could keep up.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“The Burnt Waters,” said Paige. “Watch your step, I don’t know where they start.”

“Where what start?” Foggy asked, but he needn’t have bothered. He’d barely got the question out before he took his next step, and the toes of his right foot sank through a crust of blackened earth into water.

Extremely _hot_ water. He had to windmill his arms to stay upright and Paige and Black Sky hauled him backwards from the edge. Black Sky had to stab through his jacket to do so, but as a jet of steam burst upwards from the crack in the surface he’d made, he couldn’t find it in himself to worry about that. She could’ve stabbed through his kidney and he’d still be up on boiling to death.

“Okay, well, we found the start,” he said. Neither of his companions dignified that with an answer. “Is there a way through? A way over?”

“It’s here, sweetie,” an unfamiliar voice said, soft and thick as smoke. And it was smoky, because when he turned to see who had spoken, Foggy saw.

Well. There really was only one way of putting it.

He saw a tiny black and green dragon. In full Elizabethan dress. Riding a bear.

“Hello Foggy,” the dragon said, something like a smile emerging from three rows of teeth. Smoke curled from under her lip as she spoke, and each of the spikes protruding from her face — sharp shears of bone — peeked through, pale against the dark of her scales. Her ruff, he realised, was no ruff at all — a large frill of skin that flared and rippled with her breathing. “My, you’ve grown.”

“Do I know you?” Foggy asked, something nagging at the back of his mind.

“Better than that, you’ve forgotten me. That’s an advantage in this place. What’s already forgotten can’t be stolen from you.” The ridges above her eyes drew together in a frown. “But what’s stolen can be forgotten. Be careful of that, my dear.”

Paige stepped forward. “ _I_ don’t know you, and I know the Labyrinth.”

“You know a Labyrinth, not his Labyrinth. Not mine. You of everyone know it changes. That change is the only way to get through it.” The dragon blew a smoke ring idly into the air, then split it with the tip of her thin wing.

Black Sky got to the point: “Who are you?”

A toothy smile. “I am Good Queen Bess, of Brettania, of course. And this is Copper.” She patted the bear’s flank with scaly claw.

“Queen-”

“Not _his_ Queen. Though something like him tried once. In my own right, and I hope, in your eyes, mm?” She tilted her head, as though it were beneath her to even consider the possibility of being disrespected. “If you want the way through the waters.”

“Of course!” And it was of course, it was natural, fitting, to sort of bow to something a foot shorter than him, bear included. “Ma’am, I mean,” Foggy added, as a dull flush of embarrassment flared up his neck, like his mom was disappointed in him, though Bess had done nothing to provoke it.

“There’s a good boy.” She beamed at him, before turning an imperious eye on his companions. “What now, the rest of you don’t know how to curtsey?”

Black Sky crossed the blades at her ankles with barely concealed contempt and a rasp of metal on metal, while Paige managed an impressive bow full of flourishes. The bear huffed, disgruntled, and Bess calmed him with scratch behind his ears. “Hush, Copper, it’ll do. Follow close, mind, and keep within the pawprints.”

The bear lumbered round and set off, grumbling all the while, and Bess didn’t spare them a backwards glance to see if they followed. Foggy’s confidence waned with each step the odd pair took away from his little group, and he hesitated at the edge of the black-crusted wasteland. He half turned his head, to check with his companions that he wasn’t completely mad, following a bear and a dragon to a boiling watery grave, when Bess called out, without so much as a glance backwards:

“Eyes forward, Foggy. Only way to get through. Eyes forward, and keep going.”

Once again, there was an authority to her that could not be denied. Not the tyranny of the goblin royals, their easy, demanding cruelty. It was more fond than that, without being cosseting. He had to shut his eyes for a moment to avoid the temptation to look back at Paige for reassurance, but once the urge passed he set his gaze forward and stepped firmly into the first pawprint.

The charred earth crackled beneath his weight, but did not give way. It was hot though, warming fast through the sole of his shoe to his foot, and he had to find the next print quickly.

Copper’s stride was longer than his, and he must have looked ridiculous, hopping from spot to spot with his usual total lack of grace, but it never occurred to him to turn round to see if his new friends were laughing at him. No, Bess’s words had stuck with him, and he kept on, eyes fixed on the frills that ran down the back of her head as she swayed gently on her beast of (small) burden.

There was no ceremony on reaching the other side, just a print sunk in mud instead of burnt earth. He almost turned to call back to Paige behind him, but Bess wheeled on him and clicked her long tongue.

“Now now, remember what I said. Eyes forward.” Her gaze was fixed on his face and never left it to look beyond, to look back. He coloured slightly.

“Right, yes. Thank you. I mean, uh, thank you, properly, Ms, um, Queen, um-”

When Bess smiled her fangs seemed to grow an inch or two. “That’s quite alright, Foggy.”

“No, but really, do I owe you-”

“Lots of things in this place take a toll. I don’t like to.” She paused and blew another ring of smoke. “But it’d be a kindness to leave something of yourself here, to guide the next one.”

“Are you not staying here?” Foggy asked, surprised. Bess flicked her blue tongue out at him, languid.

“No, dear, I’m coming with you. Best not to malinger anywhere in the Labyrinth once it’s had its service from you. Eyes forward, keep going, as I told you.”

He rummaged in his pockets as Paige made it across and joined them, watching with large eyes. The string was lost, and his wrench was Paige’s now, he’d never make her part with it, which left the nuts and bolts — two of both. He laid them out on his palm and Bess looked them over.

“Keep those,” she said, nudging the nuts with a scaly claw. “A ring of iron can do you a powerful good in this place.”

“Then I’ll keep one and leave one for someone else,” Foggy decided, and she harrumphed a little. He placed the bolts on the ground, one over the other, and the spare nut beside them. “X marks the spot, I guess.” The other nut he wedged onto his little finger, though it wouldn’t even slip past the first knuckle.

Black Sky arrived then, the tips of her blades white hot and steaming. “The spot for what?”

“Not for us,” said Foggy. “Time to move on. Eyes forward.”

Fresh walls loomed not too far away. There was only one way to make them closer. 

* * *

On the other side of the Burnt Waters the Labyrinth felt less malevolent. No less alive — the walls still moved when they looked away — but creatures rustling through the dust were replaced with vibrant creeping vines and butterflies the size of fists. It was more like a maze than a prison, and more like a garden than a maze — as though it would guide Foggy through it, by whichever path it wished, rather than lead him in circles.

They kept together, but Paige, taller than the rest of them, was always a few steps ahead, scouting the way. Perhaps an hour past the Burnt Waters she turned a corner, and the sound of her footsteps died away at once.

It took Foggy a second to notice, but then he ran full tilt to the opening. “Are you alri-”

The corner had opened onto small square dominated by a sprawling tree whose branches ambled over the ground, low enough to sit on. Paige was standing by the trunk, where the branches gathered thickest and cast her into half light. Birds fluttered at the top of the canopy, only fifteen feet above the ground. Somewhere in the courtyard water burbled. The place seemed built for a rest, and even as Foggy’s feet ached, he kept his guard up.

“Paige?” he called as he approached, and she turned and smiled.

“I’ve never been this far. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She gestured to the sun-dappled stone and Foggy saw that in her hand was a fruit, soft and pink. If it had come from the tree it must have been the only one — there was nothing hanging on the branches. “A person could stay here forever and be happy, right?”

“Is that a peach?” he asked, and Paige jumped, almost crushed the fruit in her hand. A bead of juice swelled through the broken skin and Foggy’s mouth watered. He was so hungry, so thirsty.

He reached for it, but Black Sky reached faster, speared it with a single thrust and turned to Paige with a snarl. “Traitor!” Her second sai lay across Paige’s throat in an instant.

Foggy only just managed to stop himself pulling away the blade with his hand. “What are you doing?!”

“She’s not Paige! She’s a Page. The Page. She works for the Goblin Castle. For the King and the Prince! He gave her this in the black sky, before she knew we were there to watch.” Black Sky’s voice became a low hiss. “I thought you would keep faith with him. I will slit your throat-”

“Don’t,” Foggy said, but it sounded weak to his own ears.

The juice of the plump peach ran down the blade of Black Sky’s arm and dripped into the dirt, where it hissed and spat like acid. Paige — the Page — had her hands over her face as she slumped back against the tree trunk, boxed in by Copper, who would not stop barking, and Bess’s snorts, closer to flame than smoke and stopping only a few inches short of her skin.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, over and over, and Foggy was dizzy with the betrayal, a phantom stickiness on his fingers, a ghost of sweetness in his mouth.

“But we’re friends,” he said, helplessly, and the Page coughed up something like a sob that he couldn’t bring himself to disbelieve.

“We _are_. But I was his friend first, his only friend, he’s so lonely, and he swore he’d keep you safe, and you’d forget about-”

“About Candace? Was that what this was supposed to do?” He pulled the squashed and dripping fruit off Black Sky’s blade, dropped it on the path and ground it under his heel. “Never. You hear me? Tell your _King_ that I am here for my sister and I will not stop for anything, and certainly not for plums or peaches or pomegranates!”

He turned to Bess and Black Sky. “Tie her to the tree and leave her behind, we’ve got to keep going.” He flexed his hand where a few drops of juice were drying, tight and warm on his skin. His head was still pounding with hot blood, anger and shock and hurt all fighting within him.

He strode away a few paces, towards a fountain that was no more nor less curious than everything else in the Labyrinth. He washed off his hand, and then his face.

On a second look, the basin was a little stranger, silvered and bottomless and full of the clearest water he’d ever seen, but offering him no reflection. He could feel the water dripping off his hair, but when the droplets hit the surface there were no ripples, just smooth reabsorption. He cupped a handful-

“Don’t!” the Page shouted, struggling with Bess and Black Sky, heedless of fire and blades, suddenly frantic-

-and he drank.

It didn’t taste of water at all, closer to wine, rich as a secret on his tongue. He chased it round his mouth, leaning forwards — tipping forwards, really, and when his forehead touched the water it was less being submerged and more sinking into silk sheets that flowed against his skin as he sank down, and down, and down.

* * *

He thought briefly, madly, that he heard yelling behind him, but it must have been the first notes of the music. The orchestra were playing a waltz, though he couldn’t see the musicians in the silver ballroom, just hear each note vibrate under his skin.

It was bright and light and shining all around, and his dark suit stuck out like a sore thumb among the swirling silver dancers. All the same, a woman with a beautiful changing face swept him up, let him turn her and twirl her to her next partner, before another woman, just the same and just as different, took his hand.

There was a seesaw note to the music, to the strings, like laughter, high and sharp and cruel.

The second woman passed him onto a third, and a fourth, and Foggy tried to smile back at them, at their beautiful faces and their eyes that slid right past him. He knew this was meant to be good, be fun, but he couldn’t feel it, even as his feet went on dancing and dancing and a thrum of panic rose from his gut to his chest.

And then the fifth, sixth, seventh woman twirled away and his next partner was a man. A man in an officer’s uniform, bright white with shining silver buttons that pressed against Foggy’s ribs when the soldier held him too tightly. The panic in his chest rose higher, and there was a flush in his cheeks, because he liked this, maybe, and maybe he shouldn’t have, and his feet kept dancing, and there was no time to think.

His next partner was another man who held him as tight as the last. It’s okay, Foggy thought, it’s okay. But then he looked at his partner’s face, and it was just as handsome and unknowable and unreal as the women, cold eyes staring right through him.

They were on all sides and they were laughing, each way he turned, round and round, and then they were reaching out, hands clawed and long and grasping — don’t trust the hand, he remembered, from a voice that sounded worried about him in his memory, a voice that cared, _don’t trust the hand_. Fingers curled into his sleeve and ripped the seam — a grip like a vice caught his wrist and bruised it — a hand tangled in his hair and yanked his head back to expose his neck, and the laughter reached its peak.

And then it turned to screaming. Every hand released him in an instant, and as Foggy blinked away tears a red blur cleared a path around him with savagery more elegant than any of the dancing had been.

It was the Goblin Prince, red from head to toe and getting redder, as blood dripped from his knuckles. Reaching behind him he grabbed at Foggy’s collar and hauled him to one side of the room. “Hold on,” he warned, even though his sleek leather look offered precisely no handholds. He held a baton in his hands, and as he spoke he hurled it past Foggy’s head, close enough that he heard it whistle, and it cracked the air around them like glass.

Out of instinct Foggy reached for the prince, grabbed his arms, as they fell and floated, rose up and drifted down, even as they didn't move at all, just waited for the world to reform around them. When it did it was close, and warm, and Foggy kept his hands on the prince’s arms even as the solid ground beneath his feet and the wall at his back held him up. Held them close.

“Where are we?”

“Safe,” said the prince. He looked a little more princely in the half-light, all chiseled jaw and flush with rescuing, well, not a damsel. Foggy was supposed to be the hero, he thought, but the idea slipped away from him as fast as it dawned. The hero of what? He wasn’t going anywhere. He was safe. He felt safe.

“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” the prince asked, and Foggy shook his head, confused. Uncertain.

He had only half an idea who ‘they’ were, so he voiced it. “They were beautiful.”

The equally beautiful face before his twisted in disgust. “They’re not. You are. I didn’t want you to end up in there,” the prince ventured. “I want you safe, do you understand?”

Foggy blinked at him. “End up where?” he asked. He was where he had always been, with the wall at his back just like the one in front. Comforting red brick that seemed to press closer all the time, keeping him in, and safe. The bricks were warm, like the outside of a kiln. On either side the prince’s arms boxed him in, but he didn’t feel trapped. Only safe.

There was a word for walls on all sides — many words, but they slid out of his head, like sand from an hourglass. Time… he cared about time. Why?

“I’m looking for something,” he said

“What are you looking at?” the prince asked, and that wasn’t quite right, but Foggy answered anyway.

“You.”

The prince smiled. “Me,” he agreed, and inched a little closer, so that Foggy couldn’t see the wall beyond him, or anything, really, beyond his red mouth.

Still, the thought persisted. “I was looking for something I loved.” That was it, something he lov-

“You could love me,” the prince offered, oddly tentative. He’d never heard him so unsure, always cocky and confident — even if he couldn’t remember when he’d heard him before. All his life, probably. He’d known this man forever, hadn’t he?

“I could,” Foggy agreed, and it felt true — truer than the bricks behind him, and truer than safe, and just as true as _something he loved_ , something he had to find.

The prince moved his head a fraction, and kissed him. As first kisses went, it was rather lovely, soft but insistent, warm, lingering. As first kisses went, it wasn’t one — not Foggy’s first, at least. But it felt like it should be, like it was a natural beginning. He cupped the prince’s smooth jaw as the kiss went on, splintered into dozens of kisses, on and on, calm and sweet.

His heart wouldn’t stop thudding. Tick-tock, it beat. Tick-tock. He was running out of time.

He tore his mouth away, panting — and why was he panting from those light, gentle kisses? Thud, thud, tick-tock. The prince gripped his shoulders, his chin, kissed him again, harder and hotter, and Foggy was almost distracted by the press of his tongue, but his heart kept rising and rising, until it was almost beating in his ears.

He drew back again, his head smacking against the wall. The prince leaned in again, concerned, but Foggy’s weak “no,” sent him springing away like he’d been burnt. “I’m looking for something,” Foggy implored. There were tears in his eyes, blurring his vision. “What am I looking for?”

“Someone you love,” the prince said, and he sounded sad. He took a step to the side, and beyond him there wasn’t just brick wall, stretching on forever, but an archway, and a path stretching out into a valley, at the end of which lay the Goblin City.

From very, very far away, Foggy could hear a baby crying.

“Candace!” He didn’t reproach himself for forgetting. He’d learnt enough to know the Labyrinth was no place to get bogged down in guilt. He had to keep moving. Foggy started towards the arch, then turned to the prince.

The goblin was hunched in on himself, looking at the ground. “Keep to the path. It will take you straight to the city, I promise. I’ll make sure no one follows you.” Foggy hesitated, thanks hovering on his lips. The prince raised his head. “Run.”

Foggy ran.


	4. Chapter 4

The prince had not lied. The path ran straight, or as straight as anything in the Labyrinth ran, to the squat homes of the Goblin City. Beyond them rose a wall, at least forty feet high, gleaming orange in the dim sun, and in front of it was a dark mass of shifting, glinting metal. An army, fully armoured, waiting.

He stopped running just at the outskirts, ducked behind one of the buildings, and took a breath. There was nothing to do but go forwards, he decided. He stepped out into the main street — and turned back again. The army was vast, hundreds of goblins, and maybe they were only as high as his waist, but between them there were thousands of teeth and spears and other pointy things to rip him apart. He didn’t even have his wrench any more.

“I’ll take the 500 on the left,” a voice hissed in his left ear. Foggy jumped, and damn near impaled himself on Black Sky’s not-hand.

“I’ll take the 500 on the right,” Bess puffed on his other side, her breath warm and soft.

“So that leaves me-”

“The 500 in the middle,” they agreed. Foggy swallowed.

“Right,” he said, nodding to himself and moving nowhere.

“No, the middle,” Bess corrected.

“Right.”

“No, _left_ ,” said another voice.

“No, _I’m_ left,” Black Sky insisted.

“No, on _your_ left,” the voice replied, annoyed. The voice that was neither Foggy, nor Bess, nor Black Sky, nor a bear, and so did not belong at all, but fitted in as if it did. As if it had never left.

Foggy turned left, and as he did a fissure appeared in the wall barely a foot from him, in the shape of a door. It swung slowly inwards and all of them froze, waiting for some fresh horror to fight.

It was Paige- The Page standing at the end of a passageway that vanished down into the earth. She looked different, her hair tied back underneath a frankly ridiculous hat that matched her gold-brocaded uniform. Foggy flattered himself that if she’d been dressed in red velvet when they’d first met, he might have figured out the riddle a little faster.

“I told you to tie her up!” he said.

Bess and Black Sky exchanged looks before Bess snorted, a curl of smoke around her words. “We did. But you try tying knots with wings-”

“-and teeth,” Black Sky added.

“-and see how you do.”

“Excuse me,” Page said, and though she was timid, her voice was still clear as a bell. Foggy waited, but she was quiet. And then he realised.

“You’re not excused. Yet.”

She nodded solemnly. “I have an apology, if that helps.”

He thought about it. Thought about her damp eyes, and how steadily she met his gaze, without a trace of defensiveness. Thought about the lick of rage inside him, the sting of betrayal, and how uncomfortable they felt. “Okay,” Foggy said, and she turned on her heel and scurried away down the passage away from them.

Foggy stood there watching her go, nonplussed, until she turned back and gestured to the walls around her. “This is the apology! It’ll take us to the castle. Unless you’d rather use the gate?”

“Oh!” said Foggy. “Right!”

“Left,” came a chorus from his companions, as they hurried down the passage.

It was a smooth path, just wide enough to walk two abreast, with torches in sconces lighting the way. Foggy fell into step with Page, who turned to meet his gaze and, with the slightest encouragement from him, smiled back. He spotted his wrench, clipped to her belt like a sword

Only about fifty feet down the way was barred with a golden gate, hundreds of interlocking bars barely a finger’s breadth apart. It glittered in the torchlight and the draught running through it sounded like whispers.

“It’s a secret passage,” the Page explained gently. “You have to tell it a secret.”

All at once, Foggy felt terrified. It started like a drop of chilled water running down the back of his neck, before slipping into his veins somewhere near his spine, until he was frozen with it, needles of ice under his skin.

He knelt down before the door and leant his forehead against it. The woven metal grille was warm to the touch, and as he closed his eyes he felt as though he might sink into it, if it let him.

 _A secret, if you would pass_ , the door told him, somewhere between his ears and his mind. Its presence was comforting, coaxing, but for all it wanted to soothe him, he could sense — he knew, he simply knew — that it wanted a raw secret. Something true, something hidden. Something that would hurt him to pull out — because that was the point of the toll. You had to pay.

He felt a hum of approval from the door. Too many goblinfolk tried to trick their way through with secret lies, open truths, with no regard for its feelings, for its purpose. It was a _secret_ passage, thank you very much.

Foggy’s mind glanced over the pitfalls and spikes of his adolescence: an unanswered letter to Rosalind Sharpe, kissing Lee White, kissing Gemma Goldstone, the algebra test he cheated on, a dozen other little shames and victories that should have been kept from prying eyes. But there wasn’t one he could say was a _secret_ , properly. Even when he didn’t tell his mom, she had that look in her eyes like she knew. Privacy, she encouraged. But secrets? Foggy had never even tried.

The door caught his thoughts and he felt it dismiss his tentative offerings.

No. Something fresher loomed in his mind’s eye, close and hot and wrapped in a twist of shame that he suspected didn’t belong there but lingered nonetheless.

“I kissed the prince,” he told it with his mind and his lips, a gentle murmur against the gold. Then, reaching deeper: “I wanted to.”

 _We knew that!_ The door responded, exasperated.

“I didn’t!” Foggy shot back, too loud, if the rustle of his companions as they valiantly tried not to overhear him was anything to go by.

The door considered that. _Yes, you did._

His stomach twisted on itself, and the only feeling to rival it was the hopelessness crushing his throat. “Please,” he whispered, tears in his eyes. “I want to go home.” He closed his eyes, and the tears fell, and he thought of New York as he’d last seen it, all those miles and hours away, and as he’d last felt it, smoggy and cold and loud and busy, everything the Labyrinth was not, everything the Morristown house was not. “I want to go home.”

 _Now, there’s a secret_.

A wave of acceptance melted through Foggy’s mind, and then his forehead slipped forwards. The door unwound itself, tiny threads of gold unspooling to pull him through the widening gap and reknit themselves together behind him. As he turned back, it was just taking shape again, as solid as ever, with all his friends on the other side. He murmured a quiet “Thank you,” and hoped the grille shielded him enough that his friends didn’t see him scrub at his eyes.

Then the Page stepped up, and it swung open for her.

“What the-”

“We’re of the Labyrinth,” she said as she stepped through to join him, Black Sky, Bess and Copper at her heels. “We can’t have any secrets from it.”

“No point in asking a toll from those who can’t pay,” Bess added, as she reached up with a scaly claw to wipe away his tears. “But it takes a heavy toll from those who can.”

He nodded and watched as it swung back into place behind them, locking with a soft click. He ran his fingers over the back of it gently, feeling the slight give of the weave and a soft sense of gratitude from it, like it was satisfied. Just before he pulled back, he felt it speak again.

_For you, Foggy Nelson, a thanks for thanks: There’s another who has secrets here. But shh! That’s the secret._

Foggy withdrew his hand slowly, opened his mouth to ask- and closed it again. Better to keep it quiet. The Labyrinth was all eyes and ears, and Foggy had opened his mouth once too many already.

“C’mon, we should hurry.”

The passage stretched on in a smooth, constant curve, first down, then up, so far that it felt like it should have turned back on itself half a dozen times. They travelled in silence, Foggy’s heartbeat feeling loud enough to fill the quiet, until the passage broadened out into a tunnel, and then into a garden, rust-coloured and yet obviously alive, except for the brown ivy that rambled over:

“The Goblin Castle.”

This close the castle revealed its smallness. It was no fortress, but a single keep and three round towers, tilted slightly towards each other at just the angle of impossibility. Uneven blocks of red stone slotted perfectly together, so that the whole edifice looked like it might collapse if a single piece was removed

“She’ll be inside. Up there.” Bess stretched a wing out fully, so the bony tip pointed to the highest window of the central tower.

Black Sky turned to the dragon appraisingly. “You’ve done this before.”

“Just the once. A different child. A different king.”

“It would be the tallest tower,” Foggy grumbled, but then, it would be. Princesses were always in the tallest tower, and Candy was a right princess when she was teething. He turned back to his friends, and they were staring at him, standing in a loose formation, like they were rooted to the spot.

Like they were waiting to say goodbye.

The Page hesitated, then volunteered: “They normally go alone from here. The others. They face him alone.”

“Oh.” It made sense, he supposed. It sounded vaguely heroic. It didn’t sound like him though. “Do I have to?”

Bess smiled widely, letting out a great cloud of smoke as she did so. “No, honey, you don’t. It’s what he wants, and we don’t have to give him that.”

“You’ll have to climb alone though,” Black Sky said from the foot of the tower, where she was inspecting the vines that encircled it. “These won’t hold us all at once. I’ll go last. Cut off any escape.”

“But you will come up?”

“Don’t look down,” Black Sky suggested helpfully, the barest trace of humour in her voice.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Bess added in a considerably more comforting tone.

“All of us,” the Page added.

“I know,” he replied, and reached for the first handhold in the ivy.

The leaves were brittle and dry, crunching and cracking in his grasp, small splinters sliding into the soft pads of his fingers, but the vines held strong despite his weight. Hand over hand, up he went, and it was easier this time not to look down. To trust his friends to have his back.

How a bear was going to climb the tower he did not know, but he trusted it would, and that was enough.

The window was barely more than a rough hole carved into walls easily two foot thick. Foggy peered over the edge and cold rushed out at him, the kind to make his spine shudder and his fingers flex but hold firm on the stone. The room he saw was next to impossible — the edges heaved with shadows that tumbled over one another, half-made goblins and darknesses, squeaking and jostling. They were not quite real, not quite substantial, made and unmade in an instant, but in the dim red light of the sun that fell through the window, they were not frightening. They were children, Foggy saw now. They were just _kids_.

In the centre, a throne stood on a dais, gleaming white marble, and on it sat- well, it could only be the Goblin King.

He didn’t look like his heir. None of his charm, none of his looks, and not a speck of red on him, just white and black and a grim grey-green tunic that hung slightly loose. He was frightening: old, and mean-looking, and he was holding Candy in one hand, carelessly, as though she was weightless and worthless. In his other hand was a thin white wand, almost three feet long, which he whipped up to point at Foggy the moment he hauled himself through the window.

“Who are you?” asked the cruel, high voice that had robbed him of eight hours so long ago.

“What?” He didn’t know who he was? “I’m-” But Foggy caught himself in time. Names. Names had power. “I’m here for her. For my sister.” He felt curiously calm, heart-thudding certainty filling his chest, even though the sight of Candy made him ache deeper than bone. He’d free her. He would.

“Are you? Well, you can’t have her. She was a gift to me, and I don’t intend to part with her.”

“She was stolen!”

“Not by me. To me she was freely given.” His cruel smile stretched wider.

“No one in the Labyrinth is free from you,” Foggy countered, and a murmur from a thousand shadows whipped round the room. The king’s smile twisted.

“That would include you. Think you’re so clever with words. KNEEL.”

Foggy felt the briefest of compulsions, like a slick whisper curling round his neck, but held firm. “I’m not _in_ the Labyrinth. Not anymore. I have fought my way here to the castle, beyond the Labyrinth, beyond the goblin city-”

“Fight?!” The king cut him off, wild and furious, and his white wand quivered in his hand. “You’ve fought nothing.” He advanced, one step, two, raising the cane like a sword. Foggy felt panic bubble up in him — words, he was going to win this with words, he didn’t even have a wrench — when a slim baton flew out of the shadows and knocked the king’s wand from his hand.

Spry and swift, he bent and retrieved it in a moment, but by then the Goblin Prince had leapt from the darkness behind the throne and placed himself in front of Foggy.

The Goblin King didn’t even try to stop the blow landing, but after the terrible crack of the cane hitting flesh a choking silence filled the chamber, broken only by the prince’s wet breaths.

“Traitor.” Foggy watched the prince’s shoulders stiffen and then slowly ease downwards. His fingers itched with the urge to reach out, to comfort, but he flexed and stayed still.

“You brought me the girl.”

“I made a mistake.”

“You certainly have,” the old king sneered. “You think I can’t find another heir? You’ve brought me one.”

Softly, very softly, a wet nose pressed itself against the palm of Foggy’s hand. Then a claw. The whisper of a blade, too gentle to cut; and the solid weight of a wrench. He kept his eyes forward, though, fixed on the prince and the king.

The king wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t looking at anything, Foggy realised with a start, _blind_. But Candy was, eyes scared and wet and fixed on him as she tried to free a hand to reach out.

“No,” the prince ground out. “She’s going home.”

“He can’t fight for her.”

The prince turned his head just enough that Foggy could see the curve of his smirk, the bright red strike across his cheek, the determined set of his jaw. “He doesn’t need to. I can.”

He struck fast, but the king was faster, fighting with one arm holding Candy tight, too tight. She started crying at once, high uneven screams that tore through Foggy’s self restraint and sent him charging forwards. The Page grabbed his arm and used her whole weight to drag him back and he almost thought she had turned on him again until she pressed his wrench into his hand. “Fairy dust, give it to me now!”

Bess moved past him, launching herself up on wings that looked too fragile to support her and diving for the king’s face. A smack with the wand sent her careening into the wall, where the shadows swirled around her as fists, paws, teeth, ripping and snapping at her, tittering and sniggering with malign glee.

Copper roared, but the Page was there in an instant, flinging fistfuls of dust into each corner. Light erupted from them, curling up the walls, and the nasty grabby goblin shadows curled in on themselves. They died away with small squeaks and whimpers and the whole room glowed with light, bar the vast shadow thrown against the back wall by the ugly throne.

The king threw off another attack from the prince to point his wand at the Page. She didn’t so much as flinch.

“You can’t do this! You BELONG to me.”

“We never did,” said Black Sky, emerging from behind the throne, blades first.

She fought like a demon, like a dancer. All three of them did, the king, his heir, and the one he’d rejected, and it would have been almost beautiful if it hadn’t been for Candace, caught in the middle of it all. It hurt Foggy to see it, the ache inside joined by hopelessness, and slowly he realised they were losing — that one-handed, armed with just a stick, the king could beat them both.

“Why are you fighting for her?” The question was light, mocking, the feint before a blow. “No one fought for you.”

“We fight for us,” growled the prince, completely missing the look of surprise Black Sky sent his way even as they launched an attack that looked entirely coordinated. “And her. And him.”

He struck a lucky blow across the king’s face, and the old goblin howled. “Iron? You use iron against me?” His speech was flecked with spittle, rage etched on his face, and Foggy’s heart leapt a little. He could work with angry. The prince struck again, and now Foggy could see his left fist was leaving dark, sizzling marks on wrinkled skin.

The king hurled him back, but then Black Sky was upon him, and Bess threw herself upon Copper’s back and into the fray.

“I should have killed you,” he snarled at Black Sky, before a wicked smile wrenched his lips upwards. “Catch!”

Without a single care for her, he flung Candace into the air.

Black Sky hurled herself aside, turned her blades to the floor, and Candy screamed and screamed and screamed and fell.

Foggy threw himself headlong, but it was too far, and Bess dove through the air a moment behind her, claws outstretched, and Copper roared-

And the Page swept out her net and caught her as gently as a flower on the breeze. She reeled in her catch and cradled her, and Candy’s wails quietened. The king tried to push forwards, reclaim his trophy, but Copper and Bess and Black Sky were upon him again.

Despite the mayhem, there was calm. Peace in the midst of battle. The prince withdrew to her side and the dust-light swirled around them both as she carried Candy to Foggy.

Foggy handed her the wrench to free his hands. “Freely given.”

She giggled. “Freely given,” she replied, and handed Candy over. Oh, God, the weight of her in his arms again, it felt like every bit of good news come at once, it felt like coming home. He buried his nose in her curls and breathed in the smell of her, just one breath to carry him through- through anything. Through dark and fire and whatever else came between them and home.

“Rightfully returned,” the prince corrected, hoarse. He wrung his hands, and Foggy spotted a ring on his left where there had been none before; a ring of iron that had turned the skin beneath it a furious red. “I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t you dare!” The king writhed and spat, but between them Black Sky and Bess had him firm. He was scratched and torn and bleeding black, hands curled into claws. His wand was in pieces at his feet. “He is nothing and I am everything here, you hear me? He’s just a boy!”

“He’s everything-” the prince began hotly, but Foggy shushed him with a hand on his chest.

“This is my part, I think. Not that I’m not grateful, I am, but- big heroic showdown. That’s how it always goes in the books.”

“I know you,” the king spat. “You’re no hero.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Foggy countered, stepping closer. “How could you? You weren’t even looking for me. And I’ve been in the Labyrinth for hours, you can’t do that and not change.

“I am a boy, and a man, and many other things besides. I am the strength of my friends. I’m a son, and a brother, and a New Yorker, and I’m-” he stumbled slightly, but pushed it out with one soft glance at the prince “-beautiful, and kind, and a good friend, and you will not make me doubt myself. I am the hero who defeated the Labyrinth, who defeated you. I am your ending-”

“You-”

“And I am _telling the story_. I am Candace’s protector and you will never touch her again.

“I’m leaving now,” Foggy announced. “And I’m taking what’s mine.”

Nothing happened.

“Those were some fine words, Foggy, but sometimes you gotta say the right ones,” Bess purred from somewhere behind him, before her snout brushed against his elbow. “C’mon, you know how the story goes. How’d I tell it to you?”

“Right.” He took a breath, adjusted Candace on his hip. She wrapped a small, sticky hand in his hair. “Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City

Outside the tower a wind began howling, and the light from the windows darkened and died. But within the tower the fairy light still danced patterns, and though the stones groaned with force, the floor felt steady beneath Foggy’s feet.

He cleared his throat. “For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great.”

The king made one last heave for freedom, throwing off Black Sky, but faster than Foggy could follow, the prince kicked him back into her waiting arms, and her blades crossed at his throat as he howled his anger. The prince turned back and the victorious grin faded from his face as he held Foggy’s gaze for a last, long moment.

Foggy swallowed, and looked back at the squalling king.

“You have no power over me.”

* * *

He didn’t tell Candace the goblin story for a year. A year and a day — he counted precisely, just to make sure there could be no claim on either of them. He had drunk their wine — Candy could have eaten their food — and for all that they had won, there was always a chance. So he waited until the year was up, and Candy looked at him with big, knowing eyes, and, without a hint of rain or wind to frighten them out of it, asked for a story.

He told it exactly as it was, with no additions. Foggy understood now that words had power, and he had no wish to change how it had happened, or how that world was now. So he never told Candy that the Goblin King died of shock and bitterness, a rot inside his heart, or that the prince overthrew him in a bloody civil war, or that Black Sky led a coup and ruled with the Page as her minister, saving children instead of stealing them — or any of the dozen happy endings he dreamed for his friends.They were themselves; their destinies their own. Foggy would not change them for the world.

Another line he would not add to the story, though it felt very close to true: that the prince was in love with the boy, and that was why he snatched the child. He suspected, he sometimes hoped, he almost believed, but he did not voice it.

(Nor did he say that the boy was in love with the prince, at least a little, and that was even closer to the truth.)

Candace stared at him solemnly throughout the telling, no laughter or squeals and the high drama and low humour of the Labyrinth. Still, when the tale drew to a close, she smiled, shut her eyes, mumbled “No powah!”, emphatic and sleepy, and drifted off. Happy. Safe.

That should have been the end of it. It was sweet and neat and tied up most of the loose ends.

Except, of course, for the forms on Foggy’s desk and the bright lights of New York City stretching out every night.

Columbia was an easy choice, and his parents were proud of him when he made it. Anna helped him pile half his childhood into boxes — his books, his games, the mirror that never showed him Black Sky and Bess anymore — and Edward drove him over the bridges and back onto Manhattan. Fortunately his roomie was nowhere to be found, because it was almost impossible to get rid of the Nelson clan, that first day, Candace burbling and drooling on his dorm bed, his mom and dad taking photo after photo, and promising to wave from the hill that night, if he felt lonely. Eventually he had to send them off with kisses and a promise he’d call home, oh, sometime in the first month or so.

He settled in with one of the books on his reading list. It wasn't until twilight that a knock on his door disturbed him, although his eyes stayed on the page.

“Is this 221?”

“Yeah man, who are you looking fo-” Foggy looked up. Swallowed. The book fell from his nerveless fingers.

The Goblin Prince was in his room. And wearing _slacks_. These two facts were of equal importance.

“I'm Matt Murdock,” the prince — Matt — said. “Matthew Michael Murdock.”

Names had power. “You've no claim on her,” Foggy said, and his fingers already itched for his phone, to call home and check Candace was safe. Hell, if traffic was bad they wouldn't even be back at the house yet.

Matt's mouth twisted. The expression was almost entirely unfamiliar: guilt. “No. I have no claim on anyone. Neither does the kingdom.”

“Good,” Foggy said, taking a few steps forward, unsure of why he did so. Matt's hair was darker now, rusted red, and though it stuck up in odd tufts there was no sign of horns. Up close Foggy could see that behind his red glasses, his eyes stared sightlessly over Foggy's shoulder. He'd wondered about that, after- After. The blue string and the black sky, and calling him _beautiful._ “So you’re-”

“Human. Again. Mostly.” A wrinkle of a frown appeared between his brows. “The King’s claim on me was superseded.”

“Uh-huh?” He knew he should probably follow up on _mostly_ , it was the kind of slip, the kind of catch, that would have come back to bite him in the Labyrinth. But this wasn’t the Labyrinth. This was his world, his home, his turf. Columbia might’ve been brand new to him, but he belonged.

“You said,” Matt ducked his head and it was adorable, like a duck, and Foggy had to remind himself quite firmly that he was also probably still a bit goblin, still a lot dangerous, “you said you were taking what was yours.”

“Oh,” he muttered. Then. “ _Oh_! So you’re … mine? Okay, just to be super clear on this, that’s purely metaphorical, right? I don’t really… own you…”

Matt laughed, and it was warmer here, kinder, better. It didn’t send a chill up Foggy’s spine, but a hot spark down it instead. He wanted to hear Matt laugh again. “No you don’t own me. I’m just… yours.” His smile was coy, and held a hint of the old smirk. Then, after a beat where clearly, _clearly_ , Foggy was meant to have done something impressive, he added, with a touch of petulance: “If you want me, that is.”

“If I- oh, wow, we really haven’t left the royal ego behind, have we?” But he brought his hands up to cup Matt’s face anyway, and kissed him like heroes kiss princes in storybooks (the best kind, anyway). “Alright, I guess I’ll have you.”

And then he kissed him again, a little more like teenagers kiss their boyfriends when their parents are in a different state.

When the kisses gentled and then dried up, he brushed his thumbs over Matt’s cheeks and smiled. “We should really close the door so we don’t become the weird first day at the dorm story.” He moved to close it, but pulled Matt with him by the hand. He didn’t actually believe Matt was going to fly out the window if he let go but- okay, so a bit of him definitely did believe that.

Somewhere around Foggy trying to jimmy the stubborn lock one-handed, Matt must’ve figured it out. “I’m real, Foggy, I promise. I _swear_.”

“I know. Or I will know, it’s all a bit- I just wasn’t expecting the fairytale ending.”

Matt screwed up his nose in disgust. “I was a _goblin_ , not a fairy, urgh-” and Foggy laughed in pure delight.

“So, no happily ever after?”

Matt smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

At the top of the hill at Fort Nonsense, an old blind fox turned his face from New York City and shrieked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... finished a thing? How strange, how wicked.
> 
> You can catch me on Tumblr or Twitter at @ctimenefic, where I am generally trash of some sort or another, or let me know what you thought of this nonsense in a comment!
> 
> Huge thanks again to pogopop for beta'ing!


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